What can I compare Mike Petriello to? He is finer than a summer’s a day, a dew-crested tulip, or a big ol’ ziplock bag of melted chocolate. He is even finer than these things because no chocolate, flower, or Earthly rotation has enGIF’d MLB footage for me at 7:00 a.m. on Sunday morning.

The St. Louis Cardinals are a legitimate playoff contender in 98% percent of universes….. Universi? Yeah, expanded wildcard, I don’t feel like a homer saying that. Not saying they are great this year, but I’d say there are 15-18 legitimate playoff contenders right now.

Can someone explain something to me about advanced stats and Yuni B. Looking at Yuni B’s stats in 2011 for the brewers his wRC+ is 73, and his Fld is -6.9, which would seem to indicate he was well below average in both hitting and fielding, and yet somehow he had a 0.4 WAR. Does WAR take into account position scarcity, because I don’t see how you can be that bad in both the field and at the plate and still have any value.

Intuitively it would seem that a slick fielding no hit AAA shortstop would be much better in the field and provide about the same at the plate, but WAR doesn’t seem to indicate that in this instance. What am I missing.

Aside a small base running credit he got in 2011, Yuni also earned 19.5 replacement runs and 6.6 positional runs. Basically, these are the bonuses he receives for playing a tough position and staying not injured. If he had played below replacement level (SS averaged 88 wRC+ in 2011) then his combined offensive and defensive run values would have negated those positional and replacement values.

The key hang up here is to remember that wRC+ and UZR have a league average baseline, while WAR has a replacement level baseline. So while a corner outfielder with 100 wRC+ and 0.0 UZR might seem bleh, he’d actually be like a 2.0 WAR player because an average starter is about 2.0 WAR, not 0.0 WAR. Also, each position has different average offensive expectations. A 90 wRC+ SS or C is above average offensively in a typical year.